let them come home

“They found someone from my high school once,” Travis said. His eyes had that glassy look that Hunter had come to recognize—a relived moment, the start of a panicked confession. “He’d been dragged behind a truck—didn’t have a fucking face no more, had to identify him by his teeth. And the cops said they didn’t know why, and his family said they didn’t know why, but I knew why and the guys who killed him knew why—” Travis’s breathing was too fast, his next sentence came out strangled. “Cause he was a fucking faggot like me, man. He was gay like me and when I walked home from school every day after that I was so fucking scared. Jumped every time I heard a diesel engine for weeks like, what if they knew about me too—”

Travis sobbed so hard then that his shoulders shook and Hunter pulled him close and slid a hand to the back of his neck.

“Hey, hey—” Hunter said. “It’s ok,”

“It’s not ok!” Travis wailed, pushing away from him. “It happened! It fucking happened to him and it could happen to me—it could happen to me Hunter!”

“Listen to me,” Hunter said, looking him in the eye. “That ain’t never gonna happen to you ok Travis? I won’t let it.”

“What, you gonna be my fucking bodyguard?” Travis laughed desperately. “You gonna be with me every second?”

“Why not?” Hunter said, more aggressively than he'd meant to. “Why can’t I be? Where else would I go? I don’t wanna be anywhere where you ain’t!”

Hunter took Travis’s face in his hands.

“That won’t happen,” Hunter said again. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, hell, I ain’t big on violence but I’ll fuckin kill em and I ain’t exaggerating,” he said. “I’ll do anything to keep you safe. Even if we gotta move somewhere else like New York, or California, fuck man, I’ll do it.”

“You’d hate it there,” Travis said but his breathing was a little more even. Hunter brushed the tears from the corners of Travis’s eyes with his thumbs.

“Yeah, probably, but I’d be with you, so how bad could it be?“

Travis was still crying, Hunter watched another tear roll down the curve of his face and pool in his mouth when he opened it to suck in a long shaky breath.

“I don’t get why you love me,” Travis said. “I get why we’re friends, can’t imagine why we wouldn’t be, but I don’t know why you love me.”

Hunter kissed his forehead, pulled him into his chest, rubbed his back in slow circles. There were a million things Hunter could say, a million reasons he could give him but he was still thinking about Travis’s classmate being dragged behind a pickup and trying not to think about Travis in his place.

“I just do,” Hunter said finally, his own breath coming out unsteady now. “I could give you all sorts of reasons Travis, every day I find more, but the simplest is that I just do.”

“It’d be easier for you if you didn’t,” Travis said. “You could be with some nice girl and your life could be normal.”

“I might could,” Hunter said. “But it don’t matter, cause I do love you and I don’t wanna be with some nice girl cause it’s easier, I wanna be with you.”

Travis closed his eyes, shook his head into Hunter’s shirt. “I’m just being selfish,” he whispered. “You deserve something normal, not this, not me.”

He rolled to his side, gasped as pain spiked down his leg. The tourniquet hurt as much as his wound. Bile crawled up his throat, and he turned his head so he wouldn’t choke.

He wasn’t sure why he bothered. Jake was going to fail, and then Marcus was going to die. It was all going to end, not even an hour after Jake was supposed to go still and silent under the needle in some cold, sterile room.

The image ripped through him, like a knife into flesh: Jake, strapped down to a table, breathing his last breaths through a muzzle, dying under the eyes of people who didn’t even know his name.

Alone. He told Jake to expect to die alone.

He gritted his teeth, dragged himself over to the wall. No, all of this was better. This was… a lot better.

At least this way, when Jake died, Marcus wouldn’t have to watch.

Not that he’d been planning on watching his consignment anyway.

Fuck, but it was silent out there. Marcus was expecting gunfire, some kind of struggle. Some indication that they’d caught the kid. They wouldn’t bother taking him back to the base. They would just execute him here, let his blood run into the gutter. They wouldn’t even bother washing it off the street.

Maybe they were being careful. That’s what he would do, if he’d been tasked to bring a Lev in. Set up a perimeter, carefully sweep the buildings one by one. Blood trail or no, that’s what he would do. There was no need to hurry. Time was on their side, not his—

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. There had been… a sound. One he recognized, but couldn’t bring himself to name for a full ten seconds.

He took a deep breath, made himself name it: the sound of a knife punching through someone’s throat.

His mouth went dry. Why would they use a knife to kill him?

He ignored the ache in his chest, pushed it way down – so far down he couldn’t even feel it anymore.

His options were… limited, now that his knife was gone.

He could wait for them to follow the trail of blood straight to him, put a bullet in his head where he sat.

He could look around the office for something sharp, and beat them to it.

He could also just loosen the tourniquet, let time take its course.

He leaned his head back against the wall. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck.”

No ideal options, for sure. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been given an ideal option.

This was a choice, though. He had a choice in this. Every moment the tac team delayed, every moment he lay doing his level fucking best not to bleed out all over the floor, was another moment those motherfuckers had failed to kill him.

They might have gotten Jake, but they had failed to get him. For now.

Morons.

He could stand to keep breathing for a few more minutes, make that keep being true – right up until they climbed those stairs and killed him themselves. He wasn’t going to make their jobs any goddamn easier.

After years of killing their enemies and taking their punishments and cleaning their weapons and training their cannon fodder, they could do this one fucking thing themselves. They could kill one broken goddamn Lev themselves. Fucking morons.

He laid his hand over the tourniquet, found himself smiling. Kill me yourselves.

He waited. He waited for that goddamn door to open. He kept waiting.

The sky behind him brightened. Light began to pour into the room, illuminating the walls and turning everything pink and gold. Marcus kept his eyes fixed on the door, even as it became harder to keep his eyes open.

Kill me yourselves, fuckers. Quit wasting my fucking time. Find me and kill me yourselves.

He kept waiting.

The sun rose higher, reflected off the glass in a frame on the wall. Marcus blinked against the brilliant light. He slumped lower on the wall, shivering harder. It was hard to keep his thoughts straight.

This is fucking embarrassing for you. Kill me your fucking selves.

When the sun had risen high enough that it no longer shone directly in the windows, the door creaked open. Marcus’s eyelids fluttered, and he struggled upright. He reached for his knife. The sheath at his belt was empty, as was the one inside the leg of his pants. He wasn’t wearing his holster.

Why don’t I have my gun?

“F-fuck you,” he slurred. “Fucking took you l-long enough, sloppy-ass fuckers—”

“Oh, god, Marcus.” He felt hands on him, easing him to lay down.

He lashed out, felt his fist connect with a body. “J-just fucking shoot me. The hell are you…? Who fuckin’ trained you?” There was someone kneeling next to him. Just… kneeling. Leaving themselves so open. Fucking disgraceful. If it was his trainee, he would…

He lurched forward, threw himself at the body at the best approximation of a tackle he could muster. Whoever it was went down hard, with Marcus half on top of them.

“Jesus, I could be dead right n-now if you were good at this,” he mumbled, feeling around for a weapon. He felt a hand on his wrist, twisting, forcing him down onto his stomach. “There. Fuck, can’t believe I’m about to be killed by the most incompetent—”

“Marcus.”

The hand on his wrist let go. The other person scrambled away from him. Marcus wheezed into the filthy carpet.

“Marcus… oh, fuck, Marcus. It’s okay, it’s me.”

Marcus blinked. He didn’t have the strength to raise his head. “…Jake?” he whispered against the floor.

Jake crawled forward, pushed him onto his side. His face spun above Marcus.

His clothes were absolutely covered in blood.

“K-kid,” Marcus croaked. “Kid… they didn’t get you.”

“No.” Jake shook his head. He glanced back at the door. There was a pile of… something, Marcus couldn’t focus his eyes on it enough to see what it was, but there was a pile of something there. “I brought you stuff. Supplies. Enough to last…” He leaned away, started to move toward the door.

Marcus reached out, seized Jake’s shirt with a shaking hand. The blood on it was dry. “Th-they didn’t get you,” he whispered.

Jake met his eyes. “No,” he said. “Now, I… I need to get you tended to. Just… stay down, okay? I’ll bring it over.” He gently pried Marcus’s hand off his shirt and carried the pile of supplies over to Marcus.

Marcus swallowed with a dry throat. “The… the tac team. They’re still looking for us. They’ll find us soon enough, Jake, they’ll follow… You can run. You can disappear. Come on, kid—”

“They’re searching the entire city,” Jake said as he unwrapped a trauma bandage. “They won’t find us. They have no idea where we are.”

Marcus snorted. “The blood. They… Jake—”

“I fixed it.” He cracked the seal on a bottle of disinfectant, set it next to the bandage. “I led them away, okay? They have no idea where we are. It’ll take them ages to search the city. By the time they circle back here, we’ll have moved on.”

Marcus blinked. “What… what do you mean? How… they…?”

Jake’s eyes flicked up to Marcus’s for the briefest of moments. He shrugged. “I made a new blood trail,” he murmured, and picked up an injector filled with analgesic. “Now hold still. This goes in your thigh, right?”

Continued here

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“What’s past this?” Jake whispered, peering out into the empty field before them. The floodlights didn’t reach much past the building they were hiding against, but… there was no cover at all once they walked out into the field.

“There’s a fence about a hundred feet away,” Marcus said. “And some industrial shit beyond that. Past the fence… it’s the city, kid. You’ve been in it.”

Jake looked at him with that same wide-eyed look he’d been giving Marcus for months.

He’d been tortured in that city not twelve hours ago.

Jake swallowed hard. “And that’s where we’ll lie low?”

Marcus had to hand it to him – his voice barely shook at all when he said that. He shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t think that far ahead. Farthest I thought was getting you out from under the needle. That’s been done. Now we just…” He took a deep breath. “You ready to run?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good. Run in a zigzag.”

“Yeah.”

They took off running.

The grass was hard under Marcus’s boots; they weren’t watering it as well out here, where no one would see it. He dashed one way, then another. Jake was just as frenetic.

The zigzag was risky. It was a lot more likely to get someone’s attention, but then, it was a lot more likely to save them in case—

Didn’t help anything at all to dwell.

“Keep fucking running,” he ground out. “Don’t stop.”

Jake glanced behind him. His steps stumbled.

Marcus shoved him forward. “Don’t fucking look, run. Keep running until you reach the fence.” Right. Left. Right again.

With each step, Marcus anticipated the punch of a bullet between his shoulder blades – or just the flash of one passing through his brain, with the oblivion after. He couldn’t bring himself to glance at Jake. He couldn’t stand to be watching when that happened to Jake.

When they reached the fence, he couldn’t fucking believe it. It was just chain link, too – an eight foot chain link fence standing between them and freedom. No barbed wire or anything. He screeched to a halt, touched it just to make sure it wasn’t electrified. Nothing.

His hands made a cradle in front of him. “Alright, kid,” he panted. “I’ll boost you. Chop chop.”

Jake put his foot into Marcus’s hands and heaved himself up. When he reached the top of the fence he swung a leg over, climbed down, and landed with a thud.

He was free. The kid was free.

Marcus dug his toe in and started to climb.

A bullet whizzed past his head, through the fence. He heard the gunshot less than a second later.

Bullets go faster than sound.

He always seemed to forget that, when he was the one being shot at.

“Fuck,” he spat. “Kid, get down.”

Thankfully, Jake hit the deck in record time. Marcus scrambled up the fence. He reached the top, prepared to swing a leg over.

A bullet punched through him. Agony speared his calf, and he made a sound like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him. Blood trickled down his leg, instantly soaking his sock. He hung from the fence like someone’s goddamn laundry. He couldn’t move. He waited for the next bullet to pierce his skull and erase him.

“Marcus! No!” The kid leapt onto the fence, began to climb up to him.

Shock held him firmly in place, but he found his mouth. “F-fuck off, run,” he ground out through his teeth.

Another bullet whizzed through the fence, inches from Jake’s face. The sniper must be… at least a mile or two away. And a shitty one at that, fuck. Even in the dark, Marcus should have been dead. Jake, too. This was fucking inexcusable.

Jake reached the top of the fence and stretched over it, hands fumbling for Marcus. “Marcus,” he gasped. Jake tugged at his arm. “Marcus, come on, you’re at the top, just put a leg over and I can help you down…”

To his shock, a bitter sob broke through Marcus’s chest. “Don’t make me watch you get shot because you fucked up again,” he snarled. “Now fuck. Off.”

Jake’s mouth hardened. One arm seized the collar of Marcus’s shirt, and the other tightened on his belt. “You can be a real asshole sometimes, you know that?” he murmured. He dug the toes of his boots into the fence, leaned back, and hauled Marcus up and over the top of it.

Marcus cried out as they both tumbled eight feet to the ground. His ruined leg folded under him. His mouth opened wide against the pavement in a silent scream. He waited for the next bullet. Instead, he felt Jake’s hands on his arm, pulling him upright.

“Fuck, Jake, you need to leave me,” he said – but his voice was edging dangerously close to a plea. “You need to drop me here and run, okay? Your chip is out. You can make it. Just—”

A bullet pinged off the fence and flew past them.

“I’m not gonna do that.” Jake slung Marcus’s arm over his shoulder. He took Marcus’s weight, began to move with him toward the dark warehouses in front of them. “Okay? I’m not going to leave you. I’m just not. So just… just… hold on, until I can get us somewhere I can look at your leg, okay? Can you hold—”

“Yeah, I can fucking hold on,” Marcus said through his teeth. Tears of pain leaked from his eyes. He let those fall. Those, he could understand.

One last bullet whizzed past them and buried itself in the parking lot just in front of them. They both kept moving. Jake passed the first warehouse on the block, forced the door on the second. Inside, it was just as dilapidated as it looked on the outside. But, at least it was empty.

It wouldn’t matter too much if anyone from the base came looking for them, though. Their chips may be gone, but Marcus was leaving a trail of blood that would lead any search party straight to them.

“Fuck,” he spat as Jake dragged him across the dark, echoey warehouse. He was getting lightheaded. And cold. “Jake… we’re gonna need to stop the bleeding soon, kid.”

“Okay. Let me just…” He helped Marcus up the stairs to the mezzanine, across a narrow walkway to an office that overlooked the entire warehouse. The door was unlocked. Jake didn’t bother clearing it before he dragged Marcus inside. Marcus bit his tongue and decided not to chew the kid out about it this time. Jake lowered him to the floor. Marcus was grateful for the windows along one wall, otherwise they’d be doing this entirely in the dark. The faintest glow of sunrise was just enough to see by.

Marcus only realized his hands were shaking when he tried to take off his belt. He fumbled at the buckle, not computing why his fingers kept slipping off. Blood soaked into the filthy industrial carpet beneath him. Jake pushed his hands away.

“Let me,” Jake said, and this time, Marcus relented.

Jake slid Marcus’s belt out of the beltloops and wrapped it around Marcus’s leg. He glanced around the office; his eyes settled on a stapler. It would have to do.

He slid the stapler under the belt and began to twist it, tightening the tourniquet. Marcus hissed out a breath, laid back against the floor. Jake only got one full twist before he couldn’t tighten it anymore. He strapped the whole contraption down and sat back on his heels. His hands were red with Marcus’s blood.

“F-fuck,” Marcus breathed.

“I’m sorry,” Jake whispered. “Marcus, I… I didn’t… I didn’t know this was going to—”

“What, th-that I was going to g-get shot saving…? F-fuck, why can’t I stop…?” Marcus’s teeth were rattling. With a start, he realized he was shivering.

“You need to stay warm,” Jake whispered. He glanced around the room, scrambled up to snatch a jacket from a hook on the wall. “Here. Put this…” He laid it over Marcus. “And I should probably take a look at it.”

“It didn’t h-hit bone,” Marcus said, staring at the ceiling. “And it’s a through-and-through, straight through my c-calf. I can f-feel it. What is th-there to see?”

Jake reached for the knife at Marcus’s belt. “I’m going to look anyway. Let me just—”

Marcus seized Jake’s wrist in a crushing grip. Jake winced and tried to pull his arm away.

Marcus just stared at him, unmoving. He couldn’t make his body do more than that. Yesterday, he would have pummeled the kid into the fucking ground for daring to try and touch him. Now, though…

Now…

“Please, don’t,” was all Marcus could manage.

Jake watched Marcus steadily. “I’m not going to do anything bad,” he said. “I just want to cut your pant leg off.”

Marcus’s fingers were leaving marks on Jake’s wrist. Slowly, he forced himself to loosen his grip. “That’s it,” he croaked.

Jake’s brow furrowed. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.” He got Marcus’s knife and made quick work of cutting away the ruined pant leg. He hissed through his teeth. “Holy shit. Yeah… a through-and-through. It’s pretty bad.”

“F-feels pretty bad,” Marcus said, staring at the ceiling once more.

“It’s not bleeding anymore, but maybe we should consider finding someone who can—”

Marcus’s hand shot out, hovered just a few inches in front of Jake’s mouth. Jake fell silent.

“Did you hear that?” Marcus whispered.

Jake sat up straighter. “What?”

There it was: the briefest crackle of radio traffic, the whispered response. A chill clutched Marcus from nape to stomach. “Fuck,” he breathed.

Beside him, Jake shifted to a crouch and made his way toward the door.

“No, Jake,” Marcus mouthed. It was the loudest he was willing to be. Not that it mattered. The blood trail was going to lead whoever was out there straight to the both of them.

At least his leg wasn’t going to hurt for much longer.

Jake held a finger to his own lips, spared Marcus only the briefest of glances. Silently as a cat, he stood in one fluid motion and disappeared out the door, carrying only Marcus’s knife.

Continued here

Tobias was about an hour past a bad headache; he’d never had a migraine before, but he had a feeling it felt a little something like this. He stared at the neat writing on the page in front of him, eyes going slightly crossed as he stared at the letters, numbers, and symbols.

“Remind me again,” he croaked. Maybe I should have some water, too. “Lip gloss is…?”

Lars’s arms were crossed in front of their chest, and they glowered at him from their seat at the desk. He tried not to look at that: their arms, and how their muscles seemed strong and lean under their golden tan skin. He tried not to look at the shape of their fingers as they gripped their own arms. He didn’t look at the gold jewelry that winked from their nose and ears, drawing his eye. And he definitely kept his eyes away from their face: their plush lips, their pert nose, their dark eyes lined by darker lashes. He didn’t look at any of that. He’d done a pretty good job of not staring at them for the past few weeks, he thought, even though they inhabited most of his waking thoughts, and a lot of his sleeping ones, too.

“Estradiol,” they said flatly.

“Right.” Tobias massaged his forehead. “The lip gloss tubes and stuff mean the syringes and pill bottles for the stuff, and… and the candy—”

“That’s the T.”

“The testosterone?”

“Yeah.”

Tobias rubbed his forehead. “Right. Sorry.” He didn’t want to look at Lars – their irritated expression was enough of a reminder that they probably didn’t like him much – but he didn’t want to look at the page anymore, either. The writing was neat, but the notes had been written as if on different days, as if the page was made up of a bunch of different post-it notes taped together. “How…?” He forced his eyes open and stared at the page again. He’d learned about operations like this in his classes – in his classes about fraud, how to spot it and how to avoid being spotted and how to do ‘creative documentation’ to avoid ever getting the attention of the types of people who spot such things. Usually the types of business who did this were—

Well. He was all too familiar with the types of business that operated like this. He never imagined he’d be part of one. He never imagined he’d he helping – or that the type of people who did things like this were… well. Like Lars.

He had no idea how they kept everything straight in their head. According to the notes he’d been able to go through so far, they only wrote down about… ten percent of everything they did here, and it was only the absolutely critical stuff that would be hard to keep track of, like numbers of shipments. They kept the addresses and names and types of products all in their head. It was dizzying.

It was so, so impressive. He’d never met anyone like that before. He definitely tried not to think about that, too – how impressive they were.

And he tried not to think about how, the first time he’d ever met them, he’d been sobbing on his knees, and they’d cradled his shoulders in those strong, shapely hands and helped him sit up. They’d laughed with that husky voice of theirs and pulled him to his feet, grinning at his sorry attempts to make his mark on the world – by painting stupid shit on their building.

“How what?” Lars said, their voice currently thin as a string.

Tobias shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about Lars right now. He should be thinking about the clinic – and how in the hell Lars was keeping it afloat. “Sorry, I guess… how have you managed to stay in business for this long? Without… I mean…?” He pressed his thumbs into his eyes.

Lars heaved a massive sigh. “Because, dude, drop shipping is, like… the least regulated shit in the country. Nobody looks into that shit because if they did, they’d have to crack down on the social media advertising, which is all social media is even good for anymore, and those fuckin’ billionaires wouldn’t stand for it. So I sell my lip gloss and candy and plushies; don’t forget those either, rich boy, while you’re sticking up your nose at how we do business here.”

Tobias’s jaw clenched. “I’m not rich,” he grumbled to himself for what felt like the millionth fucking time in the past few weeks. He squinted to focus on the rows of numbers and words again.

Lars huffed. “Okay then, rich boy, what’s your story? How come you’re no longer rich? How come you only know half the shit that might make you halfway decent at running this place? Fuckin’ business major. Don’t tell me mommy and daddy ran out of money for your prestigious education.”

“No,” Tobias ground out. He gripped the pen tightly and stared at the paper in front of him. “I got kicked out.”

He tried very, very hard not to notice the flicker of interest that sparked in Lars’s eyes as they leaned forward. “Oh?” they said softly. “What, you fuck the provost’s daughter, or—”

Tobias slapped his hand on the table. Lars’s mouth shut with a click.

“I… I didn’t like my university’s collaboration with AMTEC, okay?” he snarled. Righteous indignation rattled in his chest.

Lars just stared at him. They didn’t move.

Tobias shoved his face into his hands. “It’s nothing. I just… I found out about how AMTEC works with the colleges within the university, okay? They mostly fund the engineering college and recruit graduates straight from there – MechEs for their weapons, ChemEs for the pharmaceutical branch, CivEs to make the bases and stuff – but they fund the law and business schools, too. They sponsor this huge yearly pitch contest at my college and – never mind. It doesn’t matter.

“I… I didn’t like what I was learning in my classes. About how AMTEC controls and regulates… everything. And no one can stop them. So I went to my university and asked them to divest. And they said no.” A bitter chuckle forced its way out of him. He looked at Lars. “No, they said fuck no. So I tried to arrange a protest, and… like, five people showed up. And I was expelled for being the ringleader. They said they needed to make an example of me, okay?”

Lars hadn’t moved. Their eyes were locked on his.

“So I moved back home. And when I told my parents what happened – they’re both kinda high up on the pharma side, my mom’s a physician representative and my dad’s a regional manager – they laughed and said, ‘well, if you don’t like how we make our money, then you won’t mind losing access to it.’ They threw me out. Gave me a night to pack what I could, and I had to pay them for what I took. So, yeah, fucking excuse me, but no, I’m not rich. Not anymore. So if you could just… fucking… lay off, that would be spectacular.” He sat back in his chair, cheeks flushed from his outburst.

Lars’s expression was unreadable.

Tobias blew out a breath through his nose. “Look, I’m sor—”

Lars lunged forward and shoved their mouth against his.

Tobias let out a groan of surprise and want. He grabbed their face, fingers sliding through their short-cropped hair. It was so soft.

“Wanna fuck you,” Lars rasped against his lips.

“What, here?” The words were strangled.

Lars nodded. “Yeah.” Their hands hovered around the hem of his shirt as they leaned over him, but their mouth was hard, insistent.

Tobias nodded. “Y-yeah. Yeah.”

Lars broke the kiss and strode to the door, pushing it shut with a thud. They clicked the lock. Then they were back in Tobias’s face, the kiss more teeth than anything else, hands fisted in his shirt as they dragged him out of his chair and backed him up against the desk. Tobias panted against Lars’s open mouth as they leaned over him and pushed him down onto the pile of papers they’d just been poring over.

“I wanna be on top,” Lars said, fingers already busy at Tobias’s belt. He groaned and did his best to help them loosen it. All he wound up doing was getting in the way.

His mind was racing, but one thought managed surface long enough for him to stammer out: “I d-don’t have a condom.”

Lars snorted. “What kind of clinic would I be if I didn’t have condoms?” They pulled a desk drawer open and yanked out a box, snatching one out and tossing it onto the desk beside Tobias’s hip. They went right back to undoing his belt and unbuttoning his pants.

Tobias panted. “I th-thought you… didn’t like me.”

Lars eased a hand into Tobias’s pants and palmed him over his underwear with a laugh. He gasped and bucked into the touch. “I don’t like business majors,” they said, their warm palm rubbing infuriating friction along his erection. “But you’re not a business major anymore, huh?”

“No.” Tobias’s headache was gone. His eyes rolled back, and he gripped the edge of the desk. “F-fuck, please.”

“Mmm, fuck,” Lars groaned. They straightened, and worked their pants and underwear off. Tobias couldn’t help but stare at the thatch of hair between their legs. Even in the dim light of the office, it was already glistening and wet. He swallowed hard, pulling his cock free of his underwear and tearing open the condom. His hands shook as he rolled it on under Lars’s piercing gaze.

Lars didn’t waste a single second. The moment the condom was on, they climbed up onto the desk with him, straddling his hips and positioning themself over him. He stroked their bare thighs as they grasped his cock and rolled their slickness against the tip. His eyes rolled back.

“This okay?” Lars murmured, poised over him.

He nodded so hard his teeth rattled. “Y-yeah, yeah, please.”

Lars grinned, and slid down smoothly onto him, taking him in. He gasped and whimpered softly.

They bent over him at once, lips and teeth raking his jaw, his throat, the skin above his collarbones. They yanked the collar of his shirt down so they could suck a spot red on his chest. He squirmed beneath them, hands gripping their hips, not even trying to guide them as they rode him. They rolled their hips expertly, sliding up and down his length, sinking into his lap, taking him to the hilt. He didn’t even realize he was making noise until their warm hand slid over his mouth.

“Shh, rich boy, I’m at work,” they whispered against his throat. He just moaned harder. He felt their body pressed against the length of his and felt alive in every nerve ending. His hands traced up and down their legs, sliding under their shirt, up their back, across the front of their chest. He drew his fingers along the two crescent-shaped scars that followed the line of their pecs. His fingertips ghosted across one nipple on the left. There was only a scar on the right.

“Yeah, had a shit surgeon for the top surgery,” Lars said with a chuckle. “Lost a nip, now I only have one. So that’s a fun fact to bring up at parties.”

Tobias couldn’t have responded, even if his mouth was free. He didn’t have a single coherent thought in his head. All he could think about was Lars’s firm body against his, their cunt around his cock, their low, husky voice in his ear. He whimpered as they rode him, edging closer and closer to release. Everything was almost too much. He was going to… He was going to…

Lars’s hand slipped from Tobias’s mouth. “That shit with your university?” they said, pressing a kiss deep into his mouth. “Hottest shit I’ve ever heard. Fuck, Tobias. I… unh…”

He returned the kiss, sucking on their tongue. His fingers tightened in their hair.

“I wish I had my strap with me,” they sighed. “I’d fuck the daylights out of you. If you… if you’d like that.”

The image of the two of them laid out the way they were – Tobias on his back on the desk, Lars over them – but with Tobias’s legs spread, filled with Lars’s cock, their lips on his throat and their praise in his ear, swept through him like a thunderbolt. He gasped softly and arched, spilling into the condom, a flush blooming on his light brown chest beneath the bite marks. Lars’s riding slowed, then stopped. Tobias slumped back to the desk, catching his breath.

“Yeah,” Lars said, sounding smugger than he’d ever heard them. “I thought you might like that.”

He blinked against the spinning of the room around him. “W-wait… did you…?”

“Come?” Lars shifted their weight and threw their leg off him. He groaned as his softening cock slipped out of them. They glanced to the side, suddenly shy. “No. But it’s fine. I’ll finish myself off in the bathroom or something. Or later tonight. It’s whatev—”

He grabbed their hand. “No?” They looked at him, seeming almost startled.

He slowly got to his feet, feeling shaky and unsteady. Once the condom was off, he guided them to lean against the desk where he’d just been laying. Then, clumsily, he slid to his knees in front of them and dipped his head between their legs.

They gasped in surprise, but didn’t stop him. He brushed the hair away from their clit and found it swollen and peeking out at him. Gently, he pressed his lips against it. Even more gently, he drew his tongue along it, and savored the noise that seemed pulled from Lars’s core. They spread their legs further for him and placed one hand on his curls. With the other, they braced themself back against the desk.

He traced his fingers along their folds, which were practically dripping. They shivered with each touch. He eased two fingers inside them, running them along until he found the spot he was looking for, and began to rub in tandem with his sucking and licking.

Lars gave a full body shudder. Their fingers tightened roughly in Tobias’s curls. He kept going. He could feel them tightening around his fingers already; they’d already been so close. He kept up the pace, steady and smooth, stroking and licking, sucking the firm little pearl into his mouth and massaging with his tongue. Lars’s breathing was ragged and harsh. It only took a minute or so before they were practically weeping.

“Tobias,” they begged. “Don’t stop, please, just keep doing that… oh, fuck, baby, please…”

Baby. He’d never heard them like this. Never remotely like this. He flushed, but never changed course. He licked and sucked and stroked, feeling their thighs quiver on either side of his head, feeling their fingers twist in his curls and pull.

Lars’s orgasm wasn’t sudden, like Tobias’s had been. It rolled over their body like a wave, sighing out of them like relief, like the last lingering note of a song. Their walls quivered around his fingers, and their legs shook as they slumped back against the desk. Their fingers slipped out of his hair. He pressed a kiss to their inner thigh, but didn’t rise from his spot on the floor. It felt nice there, between their legs, with them lying splayed above him. He listened to their ragged breathing even out once more.

Then, they laughed that husky, intoxicating laugh of theirs, and he felt it like a warm drink in his stomach.

“Fuck, Tobias,” Lars breathed. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

He chuckled. “I can’t believe you wanted to do that.”

“What?” they said. “We’re adults. The door was closed.”

“No, I mean… with me.” He kissed their thigh again, for good measure. As if he had a limited number of kisses they would allow, and he should get in as many as he could.

They lifted their head to look at him. “…why not with you?”

He pursed his lips. “You already said. You don’t like business majors.”

They laughed again. Fuck, maybe they were going to be the death of him, too. “Yeah, I don’t like business majors. But ex-business majors who stand up to AMTEC even when it costs… well, everything? Yeah, that’s incredibly hot.” They smiled sheepishly. “Especially when said ex-business majors are incredibly, unfairly pretty.”

He blushed and pressed his face into their thigh. “Oh my god.”

“Alright, you, enough of that, unless you’re gonna fuck me again,” they said with a huff. They pushed themself to their feet and reached for their pants and underwear. “We do have other stuff to get done, you know. But… I could ask, if you want…” They gave a one-shoulder shrug. “If you didn’t want to stay on Raye’s couch tonight, I do have a queen bed. If you wanted. I don’t know. If you wanted a change of scenery.”

Tobias’s throat tightened. “Oh. Um… yeah, I… that would be nice. I’d love to stay over.”

“Good,” Lars said, sitting in their seat and eyeing Tobias as he finally pulled his pants back up. “Because I have more condoms at home, too.”

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

Tobias was about an hour past a bad headache; he’d never had a migraine before, but he had a feeling it felt a little something like this. He stared at the neat writing on the page in front of him, eyes going slightly crossed as he stared at the letters, numbers, and symbols.

“Remind me again,” he croaked. Maybe I should have some water, too. “Lip gloss is…?”

Lars’s arms were crossed in front of their chest, and they glowered at him from their seat at the desk. He tried not to look at that: their arms, and how their muscles seemed strong and lean under their golden tan skin. He tried not to look at the shape of their fingers as they gripped their own arms. He didn’t look at the gold jewelry that winked from their nose and ears, drawing his eye. And he definitely kept his eyes away from their face: their plush lips, their pert nose, their dark eyes lined by darker lashes. He didn’t look at any of that. He’d done a pretty good job of not staring at them for the past few weeks, he thought, even though they inhabited most of his waking thoughts, and a lot of his sleeping ones, too.

“Estradiol,” they said flatly.

“Right.” Tobias massaged his forehead. “The lip gloss tubes and stuff mean the syringes and pill bottles for the stuff, and… and the candy—”

“That’s the T.”

“The testosterone?”

“Yeah.”

Tobias rubbed his forehead. “Right. Sorry.” He didn’t want to look at Lars – their irritated expression was enough of a reminder that they probably didn’t like him much – but he didn’t want to look at the page anymore, either. The writing was neat, but the notes had been written as if on different days, as if the page was made up of a bunch of different post-it notes taped together. “How…?” He forced his eyes open and stared at the page again. He’d learned about operations like this in his classes – in his classes about fraud, how to spot it and how to avoid being spotted and how to do ‘creative documentation’ to avoid ever getting the attention of the types of people who spot such things. Usually the types of business who did this were—

Well. He was all too familiar with the types of business that operated like this. He never imagined he’d be part of one. He never imagined he’d he helping – or that the type of people who did things like this were… well. Like Lars.

He had no idea how they kept everything straight in their head. According to the notes he’d been able to go through so far, they only wrote down about… ten percent of everything they did here, and it was only the absolutely critical stuff that would be hard to keep track of, like numbers of shipments. They kept the addresses and names and types of products all in their head. It was dizzying.

It was so, so impressive. He’d never met anyone like that before. He definitely tried not to think about that, too – how impressive they were.

And he tried not to think about how, the first time he’d ever met them, he’d been sobbing on his knees, and they’d cradled his shoulders in those strong, shapely hands and helped him sit up. They’d laughed with that husky voice of theirs and pulled him to his feet, grinning at his sorry attempts to make his mark on the world – by painting stupid shit on their building.

“How what?” Lars said, their voice currently thin as a string.

Tobias shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about Lars right now. He should be thinking about the clinic – and how in the hell Lars was keeping it afloat. “Sorry, I guess… how have you managed to stay in business for this long? Without… I mean…?” He pressed his thumbs into his eyes.

Lars heaved a massive sigh. “Because, dude, drop shipping is, like… the least regulated shit in the country. Nobody looks into that shit because if they did, they’d have to crack down on the social media advertising, which is all social media is even good for anymore, and those fuckin’ billionaires wouldn’t stand for it. So I sell my lip gloss and candy and plushies; don’t forget those either, rich boy, while you’re sticking up your nose at how we do business here.”

Tobias’s jaw clenched. “I’m not rich,” he grumbled to himself for what felt like the millionth fucking time in the past few weeks. He squinted to focus on the rows of numbers and words again.

Lars huffed. “Okay then, rich boy, what’s your story? How come you’re no longer rich? How come you only know half the shit that might make you halfway decent at running this place? Fuckin’ business major. Don’t tell me mommy and daddy ran out of money for your prestigious education.”

“No,” Tobias ground out. He gripped the pen tightly and stared at the paper in front of him. “I got kicked out.”

He tried very, very hard not to notice the flicker of interest that sparked in Lars’s eyes as they leaned forward. “Oh?” they said softly. “What, you fuck the provost’s daughter, or—”

Tobias slapped his hand on the table. Lars’s mouth shut with a click.

“I… I didn’t like my university’s collaboration with AMTEC, okay?” he snarled. Righteous indignation rattled in his chest.

Lars just stared at him. They didn’t move.

Tobias shoved his face into his hands. “It’s nothing. I just… I found out about how AMTEC works with the colleges within the university, okay? They mostly fund the engineering college and recruit graduates straight from there – MechEs for their weapons, ChemEs for the pharmaceutical branch, CivEs to make the bases and stuff – but they fund the law and business schools, too. They sponsor this huge yearly pitch contest at my college and – never mind. It doesn’t matter.

“I… I didn’t like what I was learning in my classes. About how AMTEC controls and regulates… everything. And no one can stop them. So I went to my university and asked them to divest. And they said no.” A bitter chuckle forced its way out of him. He looked at Lars. “No, they said fuck no. So I tried to arrange a protest, and… like, five people showed up. And I was expelled for being the ringleader. They said they needed to make an example of me, okay?”

Lars hadn’t moved. Their eyes were locked on his.

“So I moved back home. And when I told my parents what happened – they’re both kinda high up on the pharma side, my mom’s a physician representative and my dad’s a regional manager – they laughed and said, ‘well, if you don’t like how we make our money, then you won’t mind losing access to it.’ They threw me out. Gave me a night to pack what I could, and I had to pay them for what I took. So, yeah, fucking excuse me, but no, I’m not rich. Not anymore. So if you could just… fucking… lay off, that would be spectacular.” He sat back in his chair, cheeks flushed from his outburst.

Lars’s expression was unreadable.

Tobias blew out a breath through his nose. “Look, I’m sor—”

Lars lunged forward and shoved their mouth against his.

Tobias let out a groan of surprise and want. He grabbed their face, fingers sliding through their short-cropped hair. It was so soft.

“Wanna fuck you,” Lars rasped against his lips.

“What, here?” The words were strangled.

Lars nodded. “Yeah.” Their hands hovered around the hem of his shirt as they leaned over him, but their mouth was hard, insistent.

Tobias nodded. “Y-yeah. Yeah.”

Lars broke the kiss and strode to the door, pushing it shut with a thud. They clicked the lock. Then they were back in Tobias’s face, the kiss more teeth than anything else, hands fisted in his shirt as they dragged him out of his chair and backed him up against the desk. Tobias panted against Lars’s open mouth as they leaned over him and pushed him down onto the pile of papers they’d just been poring over.

“I wanna be on top,” Lars said, fingers already busy at Tobias’s belt. He groaned and did his best to help them loosen it. All he wound up doing was getting in the way.

His mind was racing, but one thought managed surface long enough for him to stammer out: “I d-don’t have a condom.”

Lars snorted. “What kind of clinic would I be if I didn’t have condoms?” They pulled a desk drawer open and yanked out a box, snatching one out and tossing it onto the desk beside Tobias’s hip. They went right back to undoing his belt and unbuttoning his pants.

Tobias panted. “I th-thought you… didn’t like me.”

Lars eased a hand into Tobias’s pants and palmed him over his underwear with a laugh. He gasped and bucked into the touch. “I don’t like business majors,” they said, their warm palm rubbing infuriating friction along his erection. “But you’re not a business major anymore, huh?”

“No.” Tobias’s headache was gone. His eyes rolled back, and he gripped the edge of the desk. “F-fuck, please.”

“Mmm, fuck,” Lars groaned. They straightened, and worked their pants and underwear off. Tobias couldn’t help but stare at the thatch of hair between their legs. Even in the dim light of the office, it was already glistening and wet. He swallowed hard, pulling his cock free of his underwear and tearing open the condom. His hands shook as he rolled it on under Lars’s piercing gaze.

Lars didn’t waste a single second. The moment the condom was on, they climbed up onto the desk with him, straddling his hips and positioning themself over him. He stroked their bare thighs as they grasped his cock and rolled their slickness against the tip. His eyes rolled back.

“This okay?” Lars murmured, poised over him.

He nodded so hard his teeth rattled. “Y-yeah, yeah, please.”

Lars grinned, and slid down smoothly onto him, taking him in. He gasped and whimpered softly.

They bent over him at once, lips and teeth raking his jaw, his throat, the skin above his collarbones. They yanked the collar of his shirt down so they could suck a spot red on his chest. He squirmed beneath them, hands gripping their hips, not even trying to guide them as they rode him. They rolled their hips expertly, sliding up and down his length, sinking into his lap, taking him to the hilt. He didn’t even realize he was making noise until their warm hand slid over his mouth.

“Shh, rich boy, I’m at work,” they whispered against his throat. He just moaned harder. He felt their body pressed against the length of his and felt alive in every nerve ending. His hands traced up and down their legs, sliding under their shirt, up their back, across the front of their chest. He drew his fingers along the two crescent-shaped scars that followed the line of their pecs. His fingertips ghosted across one nipple on the left. There was only a scar on the right.

“Yeah, had a shit surgeon for the top surgery,” Lars said with a chuckle. “Lost a nip, now I only have one. So that’s a fun fact to bring up at parties.”

Tobias couldn’t have responded, even if his mouth was free. He didn’t have a single coherent thought in his head. All he could think about was Lars’s firm body against his, their cunt around his cock, their low, husky voice in his ear. He whimpered as they rode him, edging closer and closer to release. Everything was almost too much. He was going to… He was going to…

Lars’s hand slipped from Tobias’s mouth. “That shit with your university?” they said, pressing a kiss deep into his mouth. “Hottest shit I’ve ever heard. Fuck, Tobias. I… unh…”

He returned the kiss, sucking on their tongue. His fingers tightened in their hair.

“I wish I had my strap with me,” they sighed. “I’d fuck the daylights out of you. If you… if you’d like that.”

The image of the two of them laid out the way they were – Tobias on his back on the desk, Lars over them – but with Tobias’s legs spread, filled with Lars’s cock, their lips on his throat and their praise in his ear, swept through him like a thunderbolt. He gasped softly and arched, spilling into the condom, a flush blooming on his light brown chest beneath the bite marks. Lars’s riding slowed, then stopped. Tobias slumped back to the desk, catching his breath.

“Yeah,” Lars said, sounding smugger than he’d ever heard them. “I thought you might like that.”

He blinked against the spinning of the room around him. “W-wait… did you…?”

“Come?” Lars shifted their weight and threw their leg off him. He groaned as his softening cock slipped out of them. They glanced to the side, suddenly shy. “No. But it’s fine. I’ll finish myself off in the bathroom or something. Or later tonight. It’s whatev—”

He grabbed their hand. “No?” They looked at him, seeming almost startled.

He slowly got to his feet, feeling shaky and unsteady. Once the condom was off, he guided them to lean against the desk where he’d just been laying. Then, clumsily, he slid to his knees in front of them and dipped his head between their legs.

They gasped in surprise, but didn’t stop him. He brushed the hair away from their clit and found it swollen and peeking out at him. Gently, he pressed his lips against it. Even more gently, he drew his tongue along it, and savored the noise that seemed pulled from Lars’s core. They spread their legs further for him and placed one hand on his curls. With the other, they braced themself back against the desk.

He traced his fingers along their folds, which were practically dripping. They shivered with each touch. He eased two fingers inside them, running them along until he found the spot he was looking for, and began to rub in tandem with his sucking and licking.

Lars gave a full body shudder. Their fingers tightened roughly in Tobias’s curls. He kept going. He could feel them tightening around his fingers already; they’d already been so close. He kept up the pace, steady and smooth, stroking and licking, sucking the firm little pearl into his mouth and massaging with his tongue. Lars’s breathing was ragged and harsh. It only took a minute or so before they were practically weeping.

“Tobias,” they begged. “Don’t stop, please, just keep doing that… oh, fuck, baby, please…”

Baby. He’d never heard them like this. Never remotely like this. He flushed, but never changed course. He licked and sucked and stroked, feeling their thighs quiver on either side of his head, feeling their fingers twist in his curls and pull.

Lars’s orgasm wasn’t sudden, like Tobias’s had been. It rolled over their body like a wave, sighing out of them like relief, like the last lingering note of a song. Their walls quivered around his fingers, and their legs shook as they slumped back against the desk. Their fingers slipped out of his hair. He pressed a kiss to their inner thigh, but didn’t rise from his spot on the floor. It felt nice there, between their legs, with them lying splayed above him. He listened to their ragged breathing even out once more.

Then, they laughed that husky, intoxicating laugh of theirs, and he felt it like a warm drink in his stomach.

“Fuck, Tobias,” Lars breathed. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

He chuckled. “I can’t believe you wanted to do that.”

“What?” they said. “We’re adults. The door was closed.”

“No, I mean… with me.” He kissed their thigh again, for good measure. As if he had a limited number of kisses they would allow, and he should get in as many as he could.

They lifted their head to look at him. “…why not with you?”

He pursed his lips. “You already said. You don’t like business majors.”

They laughed again. Fuck, maybe they were going to be the death of him, too. “Yeah, I don’t like business majors. But ex-business majors who stand up to AMTEC even when it costs… well, everything? Yeah, that’s incredibly hot.” They smiled sheepishly. “Especially when said ex-business majors are incredibly, unfairly pretty.”

He blushed and pressed his face into their thigh. “Oh my god.”

“Alright, you, enough of that, unless you’re gonna fuck me again,” they said with a huff. They pushed themself to their feet and reached for their pants and underwear. “We do have other stuff to get done, you know. But… I could ask, if you want…” They gave a one-shoulder shrug. “If you didn’t want to stay on Raye’s couch tonight, I do have a queen bed. If you wanted. I don’t know. If you wanted a change of scenery.”

Tobias’s throat tightened. “Oh. Um… yeah, I… that would be nice. I’d love to stay over.”

“Good,” Lars said, sitting in their seat and eyeing Tobias as he finally pulled his pants back up. “Because I have more condoms at home, too.”

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

“As if you don’t put entire legs out of line on the regular,” River said under their breath. Marcus glared at them.

Aisha sighed. “0500 hours tomorrow, I think,” she said.

Marcus felt his knees folding under him. “That’s… that’s six hours from now.”

Aisha shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” She checked her watch. “Look, I’m tired. This mission was a shit day on an already shit week. I’m gonna have to spend the rest of this week doing paperwork, now that I have a recruit that’s gotten himself consigned. So, if you don’t mind—”

“He’s not consigned yet,” Marcus breathed. “He’s—”

“Whatever,” Aisha snapped. “I’m hitting the rack. I’ll give you tomorrow morning to rest, but I’ll be by to get you for conditioning at 1000.” She turned to walk away.

“Wait,” Marcus said. “Is he… I’ll go see him, before he… Is he still in sick bay?”

Aisha’s brows pulled together. “No,” she said, like Marcus was fucking stupid. “He’s already in lock-up.” With that, she stalked away, and River followed behind her.

Horror hollowed Marcus out. He trudged to his room, stripped off his bloody tac gear and clothes. He felt absolutely disgusting, but he knew that wasn’t the cause of the sickness creeping through his body. One by one, he removed the camera contacts from his eyes, dunked them in solution. Then, once those were out, he tucked his knife – the one he kept secret from everyone – beneath his thin mattress. He stepped into the shower that scoured his body clean in about a minute flat. Once that was done, he didn’t feel any better. If anything, he felt worse.

He stood naked in the middle of his tiny room, staring at the wall for a long minute. Then, a minute more. The water dried on his skin. There were no mirrors in his room, but he wondered how the cut above his eye looked.

He figured that was a good enough excuse. He quickly dressed himself.

If Aisha checked his chip, it would show him going in the general direction of the sick bay. It was in the same building as lock-up, at least. Besides, if anyone asked, he could always say…

Who the fuck cares. It didn’t matter. He’d make something up. And if that didn’t work, they could always consign him. He couldn’t bring himself to give much of a fuck about that right now.

The walk across the base was uneventful. No one spared him a glance, but then, it wasn’t all that strange to see a Lev wandering around on its own. The weird thing about today had already happened: a Lev standing in a fancy-ass building, risking getting blood all over the brass’s nice tile floors. He pushed open the doors to the sick bay building, and began to make his way to the basement.

As long as Aisha didn’t look too closely at his location, he’d be fine.

His footsteps echoed through the walls as he descended the stairs. He felt the air getting colder. He suppressed the urge to shiver.

When he reached lock-up, he walked straight past the Lev guarding it. They wore no visor; they didn’t need to hide their eyes. No brass would ever be seeing this Lev, that’s for damn sure. Marcus peered into each of the cells as he passed, his heart hammering faster and faster as he found each one empty.

They wouldn’t have… they wouldn’t have done it already…?

When he reached the very last cell, his eyes landed on Jake. The relief that washed over him was as instantaneous as it was inexplicable.

The kid was curled up on the tiny cot, huddled under the gray and threadbare blanket. He faced the wall, shivering, knees pulled in tight to his chest. As Marcus watched, he heaved a broken sob.

Marcus swallowed hard. “Jake,” he whispered.

Jake shot upright, then winced as the bandages rubbed on his fresh cuts. Marcus was relieved to see they’d at least let him keep the bandages on.

“Marcus,” Jake breathed. He staggered out of bed and fell to his knees before the bars, clutching the blanket tight around his shoulders.

Marcus shot a glance down the hall, toward the other Lev. They weren’t looking at him at all. He swallowed and lowered himself down to a squat in front of Jake.

“Hey, kid,” he said softly. “How you holding up?”

Tears formed in Jake’s eyes and streamed down his face. He bowed his head, pressed his forehead against the bars. “They… they’re going to consign me,” he gasped weakly.

Marcus had to swallow again. Then again, because he didn’t trust himself to speak. “Yeah,” he finally managed.

Jake fumbled at the bars with one hand and clutched them tightly. “Marcus,” he whimpered. “Marcus, I… I’m sorry.”

“Fuck me,” Marcus breathed. He covered Jake’s hand with his own. “Don’t be sorry, kid. I saw…”

I saw what you did. I saw… what I mean. What I meant. To you.

I saw what you were willing to do. Not your fault it was a fucking stupid, dumb-ass decision. Not your fault it was the wrong decision. Not your fault you didn’t know better. Not your fault that I didn’t teach you better.

Not your fault that you didn’t just let that motherfucker kill me. You might be walking away from this tomorrow, and I’d be…

Well. It wouldn’t matter, because I’d just be fucking dead.

Jake had raised his head, fixed Marcus with huge, tear-filled eyes. “You… you saw…?”

Marcus’s throat worked. “Hey, kid. It… it doesn’t matter now.”

Jake squeezed his eyes shut, heaved a ragged sob. He fumbled at Marcus’s hand. Marcus let him hold on tight. It was the least he could do.

It was the absolute fucking least.

“Does it… does it hurt?” Jake whispered.

“No,” Marcus said, as honestly as he could. “No. It’s… it’s a few injections, and then it’s lights out. You’re not even awake when you—”

When you start to die. When your body starts to rebel, when your organs start to shut down, when you really start to fight it. You probably aren’t even aware that you’re dying. Probably.

The ones that get a high heart rate, that cry, that seize on the table… that’s probably just… a side effect. Of the meds.

Jake wailed softly, folding against the bars. Marcus’s stomach turned as he caught a flash of red on Jake’s wrist – broken skin, from where he had struggled against the rope.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus said, voice flat. “I’m sorry. I wish… I wish you hadn’t, kid. It would probably be easier.”

Jake’s head snapped up. His face was red, his eyes puffy from crying. “What?” he said.

Marcus’s mouth pursed. “It would be… easier,” he rasped.

“No, you… you wish…?” Jake shook his head. “I don’t,” he whispered. “I don’t… he would have killed you. Did you… you watched the feed? He had his knife to your throat, Marcus. He was about to cut. I don’t wish I hadn’t done it.”

The words wouldn’t compute. “You… don’t?”

“No.”

Marcus blinked. “…but they’re going to kill you over it.”

More tears, but Jake didn’t fold. He set his jaw. “I know.” His voice shook. He kept going. “I don’t regret it, though.”

“What the… fuck?” Marcus breathed. He released Jake’s hand. “You’re dying at 0500 tomorrow. They’re going to kill you over this mistake. Over your mistake. A mistake I wasn’t able to train out of you.”

“It wasn’t a fucking mistake,” Jake said softly.

Marcus stood in one smooth motion. Jake’s eyes followed him.

“I wouldn’t do the same for you,” Marcus whispered.

That made Jake look away. Marcus was relieved, even as a different feeling twisted in his stomach.

Shame, maybe. He hadn’t recognized shame in a long time.

He turned to go.

“Will you be there, tomorrow?” Jake called after him.

Marcus froze. His nails dug into his palms. He stared past the Lev standing guard in the hallway, stared at the blank cement wall on the opposite side of lock-up.

“No,” he croaked. He stalked out without another word.

Continued here

Aisha glanced back at Marcus, rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I suggested that to AMTEC before we got here,” she said. “They wanted a sitrep before you changed. While it’s still fresh and everything.”

Marcus blinked. “Why? Because they think the fucking… electrons will degrade?”

It was River who threw him a look then, their mouth pinched. They said nothing, though. Marcus rolled his eyes.

These fucking people.

As Aisha led him on a winding path through the building, everything became nicer and nicer. Gray cement floors and walls became tile and plaster. Paintings of generals and people Marcus couldn’t give a single, microscopic shit about hung on the walls. The wooden furnishings were polished to a high gloss. It was all so very…

Wasteful. So fucking wasteful.

Aisha and River stopped him at double doors that looked like they were carved entirely from one solid block of wood. A Lev stood outside – a young one, maybe around Jake’s age. Her eyes were covered by a visor, and she only had a taser at her hip.

The people in these buildings didn’t like looking in the Levs’ eyes. Marcus remembered that from—

He blinked. Fuck all these people if they thought he was going to be thinking about that right now.

The Lev – the kid, she was a kid, they always seemed to be fucking kids – looked from Aisha, to River, to Marcus, then back to Aisha. She nodded once and opened the door.

The boardroom was massive. It was even more ornate than the hallway outside, the carved wooden table pulling focus away from the screens lining the walls. Only four people sat at the table that could easily hold six times that number. More waste. Marcus wondered how much this room cost to rent per minute, and all for a fucking sitrep—

“Why is it still armed?” rang out the voice of the colonel sitting at the head of the table.

“Sorry, sir,” Aisha muttered, saluting. “Oversight.” She lifted Marcus’s gun out of his holster, passed it to River. Then, she removed the large knife at his belt, and the smaller knife hidden in his boot. She left the knife hidden inside the leg of Marcus’s pants – the knife even she didn’t know about. Then she turned to face the room again, standing at attention.

Marcus put his hands on his hips.

The colonel cleared his throat. “Do you… often… allow such an undisciplined Levy to stand… not at attention, mind you… and… unfettered?” he said.

It took everything within Marcus not to roll his eyes to the fucking ceiling.

“N-no, sir,” Aisha said, glaring Marcus down. “I don’t.” She reached into her belt and retrieved the cuffs that she always carried on her, but never used – at least, so very rarely used.

Marcus crossed his hands behind his back and let her cuff him.

At least that pulled his shoulders back. That should make the colonel happy, shouldn’t it? He gritted his teeth, glared at the aging man across the table.

“Better,” the colonel said. “We can begin.”

He tapped a few buttons on the table, twinned the table to the chip in Marcus’s neck. He waited as the saved file synced. Marcus didn’t even need to be here for this, not really. This was all a complete, monumental waste of time.

I could be sleeping right now. I could be fucking bathing right now.

The progress bar loaded, and the video feed flashed up on the screen on the wall. Everyone turned to look. Even Marcus found himself looking, even though he knew what he was going to see.

The feed was, after all, shot through his eyes.

“Jake,” his own voice echoed through the speakers. He had never gotten used to hearing his own voice, even after hundreds of sitreps. “Jake, you need to fucking pay attention. That guy there. Pretty sure he was on the transport that flew by here a few minutes ago. What do you see? What do you notice?”

A long pause. A very, very long pause. Far too fucking long for someone who’d been trained as well as Jake had.

“I…”

Just that one word was a punch to the gut. How had he never… realized? How had he never seen? Jake had been a thorn in his side since he’d been assigned to Marcus, and Marcus had called him every insult under the sun: stupid. Lazy. Slow. Oblivious. Asinine. Idiotic fucking kid who’s gonna get me killed someday. And yet, through all these months of training, all the simulations, all the prep missions, Marcus had never once put two and two together to make the realization that Jake was one thing, and one thing alone:

Fucking scared.

His eyes fell closed. Fuck.

“I… I don’t know, Marcus.”

“Well, I fucking need you to know. This isn’t complicated. Fucking hell…”

A sniffle. He… hadn’t caught that, when this had actually happened. He looked up at the feed. He hadn’t been looking at Jake either, and now he was grateful for that. If he had seen Jake crying? He hated to think what he would have done, but he could guess.

He probably would have done to Jake what had been done to him.

His shoulders twitched at the memory.

A sigh, over the feed. “This location’s no good. Let’s keep moving. When we move, you remember what you do?”

Another long, long pause.

Marcus braced for the sound he knew was coming: a fist, connecting with clothed flesh. Jake’s muffled grunt. When he looked around, no one was looking at him with the horror he was expecting. Everyone, every single person, was staring at the feed with perfect, placid curiosity.

His stomach heaved.

“For fuck’s sake. When we move, you watch my six. Now let’s move.”

They moved. Now that the feed was moving, it was chaotic, and Marcus had to look away again. He never could watch the feeds with a lot of motion in them. He knew what happened next, anyway. They cut down an alley, and he was going to get to the top of a building to get a better vantage point. Jake was supposed to clear one of the rooms. He didn’t.

There was a scream.

“Kid!”

Running, to where Jake was. Marcus threw the door open, found someone he didn’t recognize holding Jake tight with a gun pressed against his temple. Marcus didn’t hesitate. He raised his gun to shoot.

Even in the feed, he didn’t see what hit him. He merely crumpled to the ground with a cry. Even though he was out cold, his eyes were still open, so the feed kept going. He saw someone stand over him: the man who had tortured Jake – and tortured Marcus, too, by forcing him to watch.

“Marcus!” Jake sobbed, going limp in the other man’s grasp, sobbing weakly.

The man standing over Marcus nudged him with his foot. Then, he pulled the knife from his pocket, knelt, and held it to Marcus’s throat.

“NO!” Jake screamed. “No, no, don’t!”

The man turned, grinned at Jake. “Or what?”

“I-I’ll do anything,” Jake sobbed. “I’ll t-tell you anything.”

The man smiled wider. “What if I don’t want anything? What if the only use I have for Levs is for you both to be dead?”

Jake shook his head, sagged in the other man’s hold. “Please,” he sobbed. “Please, don’t.”

For a long moment, nobody moved. Tears rolled down Jake’s cheeks, perfectly captured even in the feed. Then, the man laughed. He nodded to the man holding Jake. “He’s fun,” he said. “Not like the other ones we’ve killed. Put him in the chair. We’ll get this one up, too. I want to see how they bounce off each other.”

Jake sobbed with relief as the man tucked the knife back into his pocket. In the feed, Marcus took a shuddering breath, groaned softly.

“Hurry back!” the man called. “This one’s starting to wake up.”

The colonel tapped the table, and the feed faded.

Marcus was frozen in horror, staring at the wall where the feed had been displayed. His hands were in fists behind him. Beside him, Aisha and River both trembled.

All four officers at the table breathed out heavy sighs. “Well,” said one of them. “You were right. Dereliction of duty in the extreme. Surrendering information under torture is understandable, even if it is rare. But… to simply offer, before no pain has been applied? Simply unacceptable.”

Marcus’s eyes focused on the officer who had spoken.

No application of pain… except the threat on my life.

“I agree,” said another. “It’s unfortunate, but I’m glad we found this out now. There isn’t nearly as much sunk cost as if we lost one like…” She waved a hand at Marcus.

Marcus’s mouth was numb. He couldn’t have spoken if he tried. He knew what was coming next. His chest ached with each beat.

“So we’re all in agreement?” said the colonel. He looked at each of the officers in turn. Each nodded, including the officer who hadn’t even said anything.

He’d said nothing at a meeting where they were deciding to end someone’s life.

“Alright,” said the colonel. He navigated to a new screen, pulled up Jake’s file. His name wasn’t on it. They never got names, not officially. He pulled up a new menu, scrolled down to the bottom of it, selected Consign.

Consign Levy Unit O2N0W4?

Yes

Then it was done. All the breath rushed out of Marcus’s lungs.

The colonel looked up at Aisha. “Thank you, lieutenant,” he said. “You’re dismissed.”

Aisha saluted, and pushed Marcus toward the door. It was only once the double doors closed behind them that she removed the cuffs from his wrists and took him to his barracks. Neither she nor River said a word to him the entire walk there.

Continued here

I tagged those who requested it, as well as those who seemed interested in chapter 1! Let me know if you want on or off the taglist

Tobias was about an hour past a bad headache; he’d never had a migraine before, but he had a feeling it felt a little something like this. He stared at the neat writing on the page in front of him, eyes going slightly crossed as he stared at the letters, numbers, and symbols.

“Remind me again,” he croaked. Maybe I should have some water, too. “Lip gloss is…?”

Lars’s arms were crossed in front of their chest, and they glowered at him from their seat at the desk. He tried not to look at that: their arms, and how their muscles seemed strong and lean under their golden tan skin. He tried not to look at the shape of their fingers as they gripped their own arms. He didn’t look at the gold jewelry that winked from their nose and ears, drawing his eye. And he definitely kept his eyes away from their face: their plush lips, their pert nose, their dark eyes lined by darker lashes. He didn’t look at any of that. He’d done a pretty good job of not staring at them for the past few weeks, he thought, even though they inhabited most of his waking thoughts, and a lot of his sleeping ones, too.

“Estradiol,” they said flatly.

“Right.” Tobias massaged his forehead. “The lip gloss tubes and stuff mean the syringes and pill bottles for the stuff, and… and the candy—”

“That’s the T.”

“The testosterone?”

“Yeah.”

Tobias rubbed his forehead. “Right. Sorry.” He didn’t want to look at Lars – their irritated expression was enough of a reminder that they probably didn’t like him much – but he didn’t want to look at the page anymore, either. The writing was neat, but the notes had been written as if on different days, as if the page was made up of a bunch of different post-it notes taped together. “How…?” He forced his eyes open and stared at the page again. He’d learned about operations like this in his classes – in his classes about fraud, how to spot it and how to avoid being spotted and how to do ‘creative documentation’ to avoid ever getting the attention of the types of people who spot such things. Usually the types of business who did this were—

Well. He was all too familiar with the types of business that operated like this. He never imagined he’d be part of one. He never imagined he’d he helping – or that the type of people who did things like this were… well. Like Lars.

He had no idea how they kept everything straight in their head. According to the notes he’d been able to go through so far, they only wrote down about… ten percent of everything they did here, and it was only the absolutely critical stuff that would be hard to keep track of, like numbers of shipments. They kept the addresses and names and types of products all in their head. It was dizzying.

It was so, so impressive. He’d never met anyone like that before. He definitely tried not to think about that, too – how impressive they were.

And he tried not to think about how, the first time he’d ever met them, he’d been sobbing on his knees, and they’d cradled his shoulders in those strong, shapely hands and helped him sit up. They’d laughed with that husky voice of theirs and pulled him to his feet, grinning at his sorry attempts to make his mark on the world – by painting stupid shit on their building.

“How what?” Lars said, their voice currently thin as a string.

Tobias shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about Lars right now. He should be thinking about the clinic – and how in the hell Lars was keeping it afloat. “Sorry, I guess… how have you managed to stay in business for this long? Without… I mean…?” He pressed his thumbs into his eyes.

Lars heaved a massive sigh. “Because, dude, drop shipping is, like… the least regulated shit in the country. Nobody looks into that shit because if they did, they’d have to crack down on the social media advertising, which is all social media is even good for anymore, and those fuckin’ billionaires wouldn’t stand for it. So I sell my lip gloss and candy and plushies; don’t forget those either, rich boy, while you’re sticking up your nose at how we do business here.”

Tobias’s jaw clenched. “I’m not rich,” he grumbled to himself for what felt like the millionth fucking time in the past few weeks. He squinted to focus on the rows of numbers and words again.

Lars huffed. “Okay then, rich boy, what’s your story? How come you’re no longer rich? How come you only know half the shit that might make you halfway decent at running this place? Fuckin’ business major. Don’t tell me mommy and daddy ran out of money for your prestigious education.”

“No,” Tobias ground out. He gripped the pen tightly and stared at the paper in front of him. “I got kicked out.”

He tried very, very hard not to notice the flicker of interest that sparked in Lars’s eyes as they leaned forward. “Oh?” they said softly. “What, you fuck the provost’s daughter, or—”

Tobias slapped his hand on the table. Lars’s mouth shut with a click.

“I… I didn’t like my university’s collaboration with AMTEC, okay?” he snarled. Righteous indignation rattled in his chest.

Lars just stared at him. They didn’t move.

Tobias shoved his face into his hands. “It’s nothing. I just… I found out about how AMTEC works with the colleges within the university, okay? They mostly fund the engineering college and recruit graduates straight from there – MechEs for their weapons, ChemEs for the pharmaceutical branch, CivEs to make the bases and stuff – but they fund the law and business schools, too. They sponsor this huge yearly pitch contest at my college and – never mind. It doesn’t matter.

“I… I didn’t like what I was learning in my classes. About how AMTEC controls and regulates… everything. And no one can stop them. So I went to my university and asked them to divest. And they said no.” A bitter chuckle forced its way out of him. He looked at Lars. “No, they said fuck no. So I tried to arrange a protest, and… like, five people showed up. And I was expelled for being the ringleader. They said they needed to make an example of me, okay?”

Lars hadn’t moved. Their eyes were locked on his.

“So I moved back home. And when I told my parents what happened – they’re both kinda high up on the pharma side, my mom’s a physician representative and my dad’s a regional manager – they laughed and said, ‘well, if you don’t like how we make our money, then you won’t mind losing access to it.’ They threw me out. Gave me a night to pack what I could, and I had to pay them for what I took. So, yeah, fucking excuse me, but no, I’m not rich. Not anymore. So if you could just… fucking… lay off, that would be spectacular.” He sat back in his chair, cheeks flushed from his outburst.

Lars’s expression was unreadable.

Tobias blew out a breath through his nose. “Look, I’m sor—”

Lars lunged forward and shoved their mouth against his.

Tobias let out a groan of surprise and want. He grabbed their face, fingers sliding through their short-cropped hair. It was so soft.

“Wanna fuck you,” Lars rasped against his lips.

“What, here?” The words were strangled.

Lars nodded. “Yeah.” Their hands hovered around the hem of his shirt as they leaned over him, but their mouth was hard, insistent.

Tobias nodded. “Y-yeah. Yeah.”

Lars broke the kiss and strode to the door, pushing it shut with a thud. They clicked the lock. Then they were back in Tobias’s face, the kiss more teeth than anything else, hands fisted in his shirt as they dragged him out of his chair and backed him up against the desk. Tobias panted against Lars’s open mouth as they leaned over him and pushed him down onto the pile of papers they’d just been poring over.

“I wanna be on top,” Lars said, fingers already busy at Tobias’s belt. He groaned and did his best to help them loosen it. All he wound up doing was getting in the way.

His mind was racing, but one thought managed surface long enough for him to stammer out: “I d-don’t have a condom.”

Lars snorted. “What kind of clinic would I be if I didn’t have condoms?” They pulled a desk drawer open and yanked out a box, snatching one out and tossing it onto the desk beside Tobias’s hip. They went right back to undoing his belt and unbuttoning his pants.

Tobias panted. “I th-thought you… didn’t like me.”

Lars eased a hand into Tobias’s pants and palmed him over his underwear with a laugh. He gasped and bucked into the touch. “I don’t like business majors,” they said, their warm palm rubbing infuriating friction along his erection. “But you’re not a business major anymore, huh?”

“No.” Tobias’s headache was gone. His eyes rolled back, and he gripped the edge of the desk. “F-fuck, please.”

“Mmm, fuck,” Lars groaned. They straightened, and worked their pants and underwear off. Tobias couldn’t help but stare at the thatch of hair between their legs. Even in the dim light of the office, it was already glistening and wet. He swallowed hard, pulling his cock free of his underwear and tearing open the condom. His hands shook as he rolled it on under Lars’s piercing gaze.

Lars didn’t waste a single second. The moment the condom was on, they climbed up onto the desk with him, straddling his hips and positioning themself over him. He stroked their bare thighs as they grasped his cock and rolled their slickness against the tip. His eyes rolled back.

“This okay?” Lars murmured, poised over him.

He nodded so hard his teeth rattled. “Y-yeah, yeah, please.”

Lars grinned, and slid down smoothly onto him, taking him in. He gasped and whimpered softly.

They bent over him at once, lips and teeth raking his jaw, his throat, the skin above his collarbones. They yanked the collar of his shirt down so they could suck a spot red on his chest. He squirmed beneath them, hands gripping their hips, not even trying to guide them as they rode him. They rolled their hips expertly, sliding up and down his length, sinking into his lap, taking him to the hilt. He didn’t even realize he was making noise until their warm hand slid over his mouth.

“Shh, rich boy, I’m at work,” they whispered against his throat. He just moaned harder. He felt their body pressed against the length of his and felt alive in every nerve ending. His hands traced up and down their legs, sliding under their shirt, up their back, across the front of their chest. He drew his fingers along the two crescent-shaped scars that followed the line of their pecs. His fingertips ghosted across one nipple on the left. There was only a scar on the right.

“Yeah, had a shit surgeon for the top surgery,” Lars said with a chuckle. “Lost a nip, now I only have one. So that’s a fun fact to bring up at parties.”

Tobias couldn’t have responded, even if his mouth was free. He didn’t have a single coherent thought in his head. All he could think about was Lars’s firm body against his, their cunt around his cock, their low, husky voice in his ear. He whimpered as they rode him, edging closer and closer to release. Everything was almost too much. He was going to… He was going to…

Lars’s hand slipped from Tobias’s mouth. “That shit with your university?” they said, pressing a kiss deep into his mouth. “Hottest shit I’ve ever heard. Fuck, Tobias. I… unh…”

He returned the kiss, sucking on their tongue. His fingers tightened in their hair.

“I wish I had my strap with me,” they sighed. “I’d fuck the daylights out of you. If you… if you’d like that.”

The image of the two of them laid out the way they were – Tobias on his back on the desk, Lars over them – but with Tobias’s legs spread, filled with Lars’s cock, their lips on his throat and their praise in his ear, swept through him like a thunderbolt. He gasped softly and arched, spilling into the condom, a flush blooming on his light brown chest beneath the bite marks. Lars’s riding slowed, then stopped. Tobias slumped back to the desk, catching his breath.

“Yeah,” Lars said, sounding smugger than he’d ever heard them. “I thought you might like that.”

He blinked against the spinning of the room around him. “W-wait… did you…?”

“Come?” Lars shifted their weight and threw their leg off him. He groaned as his softening cock slipped out of them. They glanced to the side, suddenly shy. “No. But it’s fine. I’ll finish myself off in the bathroom or something. Or later tonight. It’s whatev—”

He grabbed their hand. “No?” They looked at him, seeming almost startled.

He slowly got to his feet, feeling shaky and unsteady. Once the condom was off, he guided them to lean against the desk where he’d just been laying. Then, clumsily, he slid to his knees in front of them and dipped his head between their legs.

They gasped in surprise, but didn’t stop him. He brushed the hair away from their clit and found it swollen and peeking out at him. Gently, he pressed his lips against it. Even more gently, he drew his tongue along it, and savored the noise that seemed pulled from Lars’s core. They spread their legs further for him and placed one hand on his curls. With the other, they braced themself back against the desk.

He traced his fingers along their folds, which were practically dripping. They shivered with each touch. He eased two fingers inside them, running them along until he found the spot he was looking for, and began to rub in tandem with his sucking and licking.

Lars gave a full body shudder. Their fingers tightened roughly in Tobias’s curls. He kept going. He could feel them tightening around his fingers already; they’d already been so close. He kept up the pace, steady and smooth, stroking and licking, sucking the firm little pearl into his mouth and massaging with his tongue. Lars’s breathing was ragged and harsh. It only took a minute or so before they were practically weeping.

“Tobias,” they begged. “Don’t stop, please, just keep doing that… oh, fuck, baby, please…”

Baby. He’d never heard them like this. Never remotely like this. He flushed, but never changed course. He licked and sucked and stroked, feeling their thighs quiver on either side of his head, feeling their fingers twist in his curls and pull.

Lars’s orgasm wasn’t sudden, like Tobias’s had been. It rolled over their body like a wave, sighing out of them like relief, like the last lingering note of a song. Their walls quivered around his fingers, and their legs shook as they slumped back against the desk. Their fingers slipped out of his hair. He pressed a kiss to their inner thigh, but didn’t rise from his spot on the floor. It felt nice there, between their legs, with them lying splayed above him. He listened to their ragged breathing even out once more.

Then, they laughed that husky, intoxicating laugh of theirs, and he felt it like a warm drink in his stomach.

“Fuck, Tobias,” Lars breathed. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

He chuckled. “I can’t believe you wanted to do that.”

“What?” they said. “We’re adults. The door was closed.”

“No, I mean… with me.” He kissed their thigh again, for good measure. As if he had a limited number of kisses they would allow, and he should get in as many as he could.

They lifted their head to look at him. “…why not with you?”

He pursed his lips. “You already said. You don’t like business majors.”

They laughed again. Fuck, maybe they were going to be the death of him, too. “Yeah, I don’t like business majors. But ex-business majors who stand up to AMTEC even when it costs… well, everything? Yeah, that’s incredibly hot.” They smiled sheepishly. “Especially when said ex-business majors are incredibly, unfairly pretty.”

He blushed and pressed his face into their thigh. “Oh my god.”

“Alright, you, enough of that, unless you’re gonna fuck me again,” they said with a huff. They pushed themself to their feet and reached for their pants and underwear. “We do have other stuff to get done, you know. But… I could ask, if you want…” They gave a one-shoulder shrug. “If you didn’t want to stay on Raye’s couch tonight, I do have a queen bed. If you wanted. I don’t know. If you wanted a change of scenery.”

Tobias’s throat tightened. “Oh. Um… yeah, I… that would be nice. I’d love to stay over.”

“Good,” Lars said, sitting in their seat and eyeing Tobias as he finally pulled his pants back up. “Because I have more condoms at home, too.”

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.